Intellectual Brownian Motion

Tag Archives: winter

I was looking outside today as the snow fell in Collingwood (-11C when we awoke, -10C when I first walked my dog…) and thinking of my brother-in-law in England, where they are getting walloped by a Canadian-style winter. He must be perplexed by the weather this week. It’s very Canadian. These pictures are from the Daily Mail, sent in by their readers from all over the country.
You don’t normally think of Britain in the snow. Rain, yes, fog, yes, but not often snow. After all, there are places in England where palm trees grow in the warmth provided by the Gulf Stream. Obviously they will be hurting…
I thought this next one was great. It’s from a different page in the Daily Mail:
England isn’t the only country having unusual winter weather. CBC did a story on the heavy snows in Jerusalem, with this next photo. It could be Toronto:
Here’s another pic from an Israeli blogger. Sure looks like Blue Mountain, but it’s outside Jerusalem:
And Japan is getting the same, according to Japan Today. Seems the winter storms even shut down airports:
Strange weather. Not for us, here in Canada along the south shore of Georgian Bay, of course, but elsewhere. Surely not a result of climate change due to greenhouse gases and other human artifacts in the environment? (That’s a rhetorical question, by the way: if you don’t believe in climate change you’re either Republican or Steven Harper). Maybe all these countries are just jealous of us and trying to emulate Canada?

Makes me want to book a trip to someplace warm, south, Mexican. Someplace where the sand is hot, the beer is cold and the sun unrelenting. Maybe next year…

Like this:

Bella’s wisdom

"This text contains nothing that has not been said before; I composed it solely to train my mind. However, should others chance upon it, it may benefit them, too."
Shantideva: The Path of the Bodhisattva

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In the mid-1990s, journalist David Denby took on a personal challenge to return to Columbia University for a year to take two courses, both focused on reading the “great books” of the Western canon. The results and his observations – along with an entertaining bit of biography about his journey [...]

I was mulling over the growth of the whole ‘artisan bread’ movement as I made another batch of dough last week to cold ferment in the fridge. As I lay in bed reading one night, I started to wonder what sort of bread Chaucer would have eaten. Or Shakespeare.

Foolosopher. What a wonderful word. Not much in use these days, but it ought to be. It is a portmanteau word, first used in English way back in 1549*, according to my copy of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. It defines foolosopher as, “A foolish pretender to philosophy.” So foolosophy [...]

I discovered an entertaining site recently called Skeptic North. It’s a Canadian equivalent to several similar sites and blogs I read that are mostly American-based. It challenges popular assumptions, ideas, trends and pseudoscience and other claptrap. In a Canadian way, of course.

April, wrote T.S. Eliot in his remarkable poem, The Waste Land, is the “cruellest month.”* And not merely because of the inclement and unsettling weather that seems to mix winter with spring in unpredictable doses. Nor for the necessity of filing one’s taxes before month end, always a painful chore.

Another misleading statement was made during one of the all-candidates’ meetings last week: that our new recreational facilities – the Central Park Arena and the Centennial Aquatic Centre – cost $20 million and that the pool was 30% over budget.